Organizational records include writings, correspondence, printed material, financial records, grant proposals, and other records concerning various organizations, collectives, and companies in which Ryan participated, mostly having to do with environmental advocacy, video production, or a combination of the two. Organizations with substantial records in this series include the Earth Environmental Group, the Earthscore Foundation, Environment '89 (and '90, '91, and '92), the Gaia Institute, Raindance Corporation, Responsive Environments Corporation, and Space Videoarts.
Documentation of the organization the Earthscore Foundation includes financial records, by-laws, writings, grant proposals, and printed material. Writings outline Ryan's Earthscore Notational System, among other projects. Grant proposals also contain significant description of the organization's projects. Gaia Institute records include mainly writings and notes, including a proposal for a conference series, "Professionals for the Earth."
Raindance Corporation records include a partial transcript of a 1970 interview with Ryan, excerpts of which appeared in the 2nd issue of Radical Software magazine, an essay about the video "Supermarket," flyers, lists of Raindance video productions, and exhibition announcements from a 1991 retrospective at the Whitney museum. A single contact sheet is unlabeled but contains photographs of Ryan, Buckminster Fuller, and possibly David Cort and Ira Schneider.
Responsive Environments Corporation records contain notes and writings produced by Ryan on potential commercial and educational uses for video, written in 1968 and 1969. Space Videoarts records include correspondence, financial records, grant proposals for start up funding, and a proposal for an ecological cable channel written by Ryan which is an early iteration of his work on what he later called eco-channel design.
Arrangement:
Series is arranged alphabetically by organization name. Additional Raindance Corporation is filed in series 7, Printed Materials. Additional material related to Earthscore and other environmental organizations is found in series 3, Writings, and series 5, Project files.
Collection Restrictions:
Use of original papers and archival audiovisual recordings with no duplicate access copy requires advance notice.
Collection Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Collection Citation:
Paul Ryan papers, 1931-2009. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, administered through the Council on Library and Information Resources' Hidden Collections grant program.
